Chapter Text
Rick hesitated at the entrance.
Did Beth know it was him? It sure looked like she did.
After his parents and Grundy he’d learned that people never really left. He’d seen his parents’ faces the night of the accident, at this same hospital. He’d seen the spark gone from his father’s eyes. Yet he had still felt them there. Like they were watching over him.
Looking at Beth now, Rick couldn’t understand what he was picking from her. He couldn’t register it or label it, and that’s what scared him.
Because what if Beth didn’t want him there? What if she hated him? What if she thought, just as much as he did, that her accident was all his fault?
Seeing her this way (laying still on the hospital bed, her fluffy afro strangled with tight bandages, her face ashen brown, and her eyes puffy with weeks of the coma) made something twist in Rick’s chest. Like someone had snatched at his heart and wrenched it out.
He shouldn’t be here. He can’t. He’s not ready.
All of a sudden, he was stepping back and her room with her in it drifting away. He was running away from Beth’s room again. Just as he’d done for the last three weeks, with his tail between his legs.
Rick Tyler, the heir of a superhero, running away; not because he was unable to save somebody but because he couldn’t save himself.
And from what? The anger? Disappointment? Shame?
For how long was he going to lie to Courtney and Yolanda that he had managed to visit Beth when he just couldn’t get himself to?
The fact was he couldn’t breathe in Blue Valley Hospital. He hadn’t breathed for a while now, after letting Grundy walk away, scot-free, at the ISA tunnels three months ago.
He had let his parents down, and now he’d let Beth down too. He’d dragged her into his issues because he’d been a selfish prick that day at the Pit Shop. Maybe, just maybe, if he’d thought of someone other than himself for one second Beth would’ve been with the team today. Not in this God-forsaken hospital!
He almost bumped into some people at the exit.
“Sorry,” he choked, but he kept with the flight, heart thumping, frantically searching the car park for his mustard yellow salvation. And when he finally spotted his mustang, he made a clean dive inside, safe at last.
At least here, things were familiar. The soft squeak of the leather seat, the shallow scratches along the steering wheel, the fogginess of breath on his windscreen…
Rick exhaled the heaviness in his chest at last. “What’s wrong with me?”
He couldn’t run from Beth forever. Not for as long as Blue Valley was facing this mysterious threat. Not for as long as Blue Valley needed the JSA.
Her face flashed before his eyes. A conscious and lively Beth the day before the accident.
Her eyes could light up all the time in amusement. Her moon-shaped smile could take out an entire room with its weird intensity.
Beth was annoyingly insistent, yes. At being happy.
And Rick feared happiness. He feared joy. He couldn’t handle it, just like he couldn’t handle her.
All life had done was steal happiness from him. It started with his parents, then to living with Uncle Matt, barely wading through the murk of school and bullies and now this.
Only difference was this time he’d been the one to steal someone’s happiness. He guessed it was balance. Once you stole something from someone, you’d lose exactly what you’d taken.
Was that what Grundy was going through? Was Rick being like Grundy? Was he Grundy?
“The shit am I thinking about?” Rick scoffed.
No way was he like Grundy. He wasn’t a murderer or a mad scientist.
Right now Rick needed solutions. Obsessing over Grundy wasn’t going to help get Beth back or find the scumbags who did that to her.
Rick turned the key in the ignition, applying more force than usual on the breaks as the hospital entrance greeted him on his way out the parking.
Next time, maybe sooner…he’d be ready to see Beth again.